PSN outage: Sony confirms personal data compromise

The prognosis is in and it's not good news for PSN gamers

Sony has confirmed the worst fears of PlayStation Network users after admitting that personal information stored on the online gaming service has been accessed by hackers.

Sony took the PSN offline almost a week ago after an "external intrusion" but it appears that the hack is way more serious than the company was initially letting on.

In yet another apologetic post on the PlayStation Blog, Sony says your name, address, email address, username, password, billing history and perhaps even credit card data might have been obtained.

In an embarrassing and damaging statement, Sony says it has no evidence that credit card details have been accessed, but cannot rule it out and encourages users to keep an eye on their accounts.

Statement

The message reads: "We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network."

The company says it is rebuilding the system to make your account information safer and have brought in an independent security team to get to the bottom of what happened.

Sony says it has a clear path to get the PSN and Qriocity service back online and aims to have some services restored within a week.

However, it might take some PlayStation Network account holders a little while before they're ready to trust Sony with their money or their personal information again.